TED, the nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, has tapped Carla Zanoni as its first-ever Director of Audience Development, effective April 1, 2019. Formerly the Editor of Audience and Analytics at the Wall Street Journal, Zanoni will lead TED’s audience acquisition and growth strategies across its global, multi-channel footprint, with an emphasis on expanding analytics, social media and digital community development. Zanoni will report to Colin Helms, TED’s Head of Media.

“With an audience reach of over 120 million people worldwide, TED has built an incredible community centered around watching, listening, sharing and discussing powerful ideas,” said Helms. “We’re evolving from being simply being known for ‘TED talks’ to a multifaceted ideas platform that includes a half-dozen hit podcasts, thousands of community-organized TEDx events, and a growing library of over 100,000 talks. This is in addition to animated TED-Ed videos and original short-form shows. With the exponential growth of our content library, it’s become vital that we deepen our audience relationships and empower their discovery of ideas worth spreading. We’re thrilled to have Carla join TED and help us imagine the future of our globally connected community.”

“TED knows audience inside out, and they know how to grow community,” said Zanoni. “I am inspired to lead the charge of this next era of their audience engagement — and to create new ways for us to come together, which is vital in today’s divided landscape. I’m thrilled to join the visionary and thoughtful team at TED.”

Zanoni brings more than a decade of experience in audience development. Prior to joining TED, she was the first global Audience & Analytics Editor to be named on the masthead of the Wall Street Journal, where she worked to transform the newsroom to be data-informed in its daily work and strategic decisions. During her tenure, she created and led the audience engagement, development, data analytics and emerging media team focused on diversifying and growing the Journal’s readership. She also launched the Wall Street Journal on multiple storytelling platforms including Snapchat Discover, the Facebook Messenger bot and Amazon Echo.

Zanoni previously led national digital and social strategy at DNAinfo.com. She wrote for numerous regional and national publications and helped launch the first newspaper dedicated to New York City politics (now called City and State). Zanoni is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of General Studies and School of Journalism. She is working on her first book.

One of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes instructs us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We might amend Mead’s observation to honor a group of thoughtful, committed teenagers across the world who are standing up for their lives (and their future lives) in extraordinarily powerful and moving ways.

Valentine’s Day marked the one-year anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida. In the aftermath of that tragic shooting that claimed 17 lives, surviving students rejected their representatives’ “thoughts and prayers” and organized a nationwide school walkout on March 14, 2018. Ten days later, the March for Our Lives drew over a million people from around the country to Washington to rally for safe schools and gun control. And the Parkland students have continued throughout the year to travel this country and the world, advocating for stricter gun regulations.

In Sweden, a teenage girl named Greta Thunberg observed the actions of the Parkland students and took an action of her own: deciding to skip school every Friday in order to lobby the Swedish government into action on climate change.

Strikes have been organized all over Europe, the United States, India and Australia over the past five months. The movement is notable in that it is being led by teenage girls. Katrien Van der Heyden of Brussels, whose 17-year-old daughter, Anuna de Wever, organizes marches there, observed to BuzzFeed: “’It’s the very first time in Belgium that a [mass movement was] started by two women and not about feminist rights.’ When the protests drew tens of thousands, Van der Heyden said, she was stunned to see as many boys as girls in the crowds, “and yet no one ever challenged the leadership of the female organizers.”

“’There aren’t very many spaces that I can be in charge of, and what I’m going to say is going to be heard,’ Margolin said. Her group is led largely by young women of color, which she said should come as no surprise, because people who are already vulnerable are going to be disproportionately hit by climate change.”

Recently, TED posted Greta’s TEDxStockholm talk which she gave in November. Her talk has been up three weeks and has already been viewed over 1.2 million times. In it, she explained why she decided to skip school and protest, saying:

“I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis.’ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

At the end of her talk, Greta says she’s not going to end on a positive, hopeful note, like most TED talks.

“Yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.” — Greta Thunberg

As I observe Greta and Jamie and all the other girls taking up leadership and the young boys who are marching and protesting with them, no longer waiting for some adult with a plan or for corporations or governments to take actions, but creating their own actions, I feel more hope than I have felt in a long time that we — all of us at every age — will also take up actions to address the climate crisis before it’s too late.

My daughter in law, Laura Turner Seydel, signs off every email with the Native American proverb: We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. The world’s children are reminding us that we have a big debt to repay and an earth to repair and restore. Time’s up on our loan of the earth.

On February 25, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 11 Residents will spend 14 weeks at TED’s New York headquarters, working and thinking together.

New Residents include:

A community organizer preserving disappearing languages

An LGBTQ+ digital activist educating kids and their parents about gender and identity

A social scientist chronicling how climate change impacts intimate details of our lives

A game developer moving in-real-life social-deduction games onto digital platforms

A former medical clown examining why performance art helps people get better

A venture capitalist predicting that adaptability will become the new watchword for success

Lindsay Amer is a content creator (pronoun: they/them) who makes educational videos for kids — and their parents. Their critically acclaimed web series, Queer Kid Stuff, gives children a vocabulary to help them express themselves. Amer is also developing a full-length screenplay for a family-friendly queer animated musical.

Daniel Bögre Udell is the cofounder and director of Wikitongues, a community organization that tackles language preservation by recording oral histories. UNESCO estimates that of the world’s 7,000 known languages, about 3,000 are at risk of being lost. He’s prototyping a toolkit to make it easier for people to get started on language preservation.

Young men from the Bronx, New York, balance dual lives, says Kenneth Chabert. Often, they have to establish a reputation in their neighborhoods in order to survive, while also doing well in school so they can get out. Chabert addresses their quandary through his organization, Gentleman’s Retreat, which teaches a select group of young men emotional and conversational intelligence, helps them get into into top colleges and universities, and provides experiences to extend their horizons.

New Resident Britt Wray is a Canadian science podcaster and broadcaster. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

Social entrepreneur Robert Clauser wants to pair nonprofits with the ready resources (both human and financial) of corporations, in a kind of philanthropic matchmaking.

Digital game developer and programmer Charlotte Ellett thinks that social deduction exercises such as Werewolf and Mafia aren’t just party games. As the cofounder of C63 Industries, she works on tools and competitive, mind-bending PC games to help people develop their social skills.

Venture investor and writer Natalie Fratto explores how adaptability may be a form of intelligence. To grapple with constant technological change, she believes, our Adaptability Quotient (AQ) will soon become the primary indicator of success — leaving IQ and EQ in the dust.

Jessica Ochoa Hendrix is the CEO and cofounder of Killer Snails, an educational game startup that creates award-winning tabletop, digital and virtual reality games and brings science to life in K-12 schools. To date, she has piloted her curriculum in more than 50 schools across 26 states, under the auspices of the National Science Foundation.

Priscilla Pemu, MD, is an academic general internist who has developed a clinical platform to help patients with chronic diseases improve their health outcomes. Her patients receive digital health advice coupled with a coach from their church or community to hold them accountable — with stellar results! She now analyzes the conversations between participants and coaches to figure out what worked and how.

Michael Roberson, an adjunct professor at the New School and at Union Theological Seminary,is a longtime organizer in New York City’s ballroom community — which drew mainstream notice courtesy of Madonna’s 1990 “Vogue” video and Jennie Livingston’s 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning, and has since developed into a global subculture. Roberson is also a creative consultant for the FX series Pose. He believes that the family dynamics created within ballroom culture can teach the rest of us how to develop healthy communities.

Emmy Award winner Matt Wilson spent a decade as a medical clown at Memorial Sloan Kettering, helping children with life-threatening illnesses. He now researches how arts and performance improve health. He recently graduated from NYU with a master’s degree exploring the phenomena he has witnessed. (PS: He’s also a sword swallower!)

Britt Wray, PhD, is a science writer and broadcaster who crafts stories about science, society and ethics. In her forthcoming book, she argues that climate change is creating intimate dilemmas in our lives, including whether and how to raise children. She’s the cohost of the BBC podcast Tomorrow’s World and is a contributing host on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship science show The Nature of Things.

]]>TEDResidency_20190225_1DL_MGL6162tedstaffDigital activist Lindsay Amer (foreground) and Kenneth Chabert (center) listen to their fellow Residents introduce themselves. Resident alum Keith Kirkland gives the new class some words of encouragement. New Resident Britt Wray is a Canadian science podcaster and broadcaster.New Resident Priscilla Pemu joins us from Atlanta, GA. Cyndi Styvers speaks to Residency groupRegister for the first course of the Community Health Academyhttps://blog.ted.com/register-for-the-first-course-of-the-community-health-academy/
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More than a billion people in the world lack access to basic health care. It’s a hard truth that Raj Panjabi pointed to as he accepted the TED Prize in 2017 — globally, there’s a shortage of accredited health workers, and many people living in remote areas are all but cut off from care. There’s a proven way to making sure they get it: Train locals to serve as community health workers, giving them the skills to bridge between their neighbors and the health care system. Trained community health workers can extend health care to millions of people.

Panjabi’s wish was to launch the Community Health Academy, a global platform dedicated to training, connecting and empowering community health workers and health system leaders. Today, the Academy opens registration for its first leadership course, offered in partnership with HarvardX and edX: “Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Deliver Primary Health Care.” The course will introduce the key concepts of national community health worker programs and look at some of the common challenges in launching and building them. It includes lessons from a wide variety of instructors — from former Liberia Minister of Health Dr. Bernice Dahn to healthcare pioneer Paul Farmer — diving into their experience building national community health worker programs. Through case studies of countries where these programs have worked — including Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Liberia, where Panjabi’s Last Mile Health operates — participants will learn how to advocate for, start and optimize community health worker programs.

This course was created by health systems leaders for health systems leaders. It can be taken individually, but learners are also encouraged to gather with colleagues within or across organizations to share their insights. The goal: to set up leaders in more countries to build community health worker programs and bridge the gaps in care.

Stay tuned for more courses from the Community Health Academy. Because as Panjabi put it in his talk, “For all of human history, illness has been universal and access to care has not. But as a wise man once told me: no condition is permanent. It’s time.”

TED has unveiled its ambitious speaker lineup for the April conference, themed “Bigger than us.” Why? As Head of TED Chris Anderson puts it: “The theme ‘Bigger than us’ can mean so many things. AI. The arc of history. Ideas and things at a giant scale. Cosmology. Grand ambition. An antidote to narcissism. Moral purpose….”

The lineup includes path-breaking scientists and technologists (like soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, and John Hanke of Niantic), smart entertainers (like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and America Ferrera and Derren Brown and director Jon M. Chu), artists and activists (like Brittany Packnett and Jonny Sun and Sarah Sze and Judith Jamison), and the thinkers and visionaries (like Hannah Gadsby and Edward Tenner) who can help us pull it all together.

Because, as our positioning statement has it, the political and technological turmoil of the past few years is causing us to ask bigger, deeper, more challenging questions. Like … where is this heading? what really matters? is there more I should be doing?

Together, we’ll be exploring technologies that evoke wonder and tantalize with superhuman powers, mind-bending science that will drive the future as significantly as any politician, the design of cities and other powerful human systems that shape our lives, awe-inspiring, mind-expanding creativity and, most of all, the inspiring possibilities that happen when we ask what ideas are truly worth fighting for, worth living for.

The Parkes Radio Telescope at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Image courtesy of Seth Shostak.

Astrophysicist and astronomer Seth Shostak made a daring bet in his 2012 TED Talk: We’ll find extraterrestrial life within 24 years or he’ll buy you a cup of coffee. This isn’t just wishful thinking — technological advances over the past few decades have amplified the scope of space exploration monumentally, allowing us to search the stars in ways we never have before. We spoke to Seth about his work at the SETI Institute, our cultural fascination with aliens and why he thinks we’re closer than ever to finally finding ET.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

What have you been working on lately?

I do a lot of writing, a lot of talking and, of course, the science and speculation: What would be the best strategy to find ET?

We’ve been looking at a list of about 20,000 so-called red dwarf stars. Red dwarves are just stars that are smaller than the sun, and there are a lot of them. Just like there are a lot more small animals than big ones, there are a lot more small stars than big ones. The other thing is that they take a long time to burn through their nuclear fuel, so they live for billions and billions of years, which means that on average they’re older than stars like the sun.

“The bottom line is, the search has become much, much, much faster. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it pays to go through the hay faster.”

With a star, if the planets around it are billions of years older than our own solar system, maybe the chances are greater that they’d cooked up some intelligence and is sending a signal we might pick up. That’s what we’re doing at the moment in terms of our SETI work.

So, how’s the hunt? How much closer are we?

When people say, “Well, so what’s the difference now between what you guys are doing and what Frank Drake — who did the first SETI experiment back in 1960 — did?” the difference is technology and science.

The Parkes Radio Telescope at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Image courtesy of Seth Shostak.

We can now build receivers that can listen to a lot more radio dials at once. Frank Drake had a receiver that could only listen to one channel at a time, sort of like your TV. We don’t know where ET might be on the dial, and we don’t know where that transmission might be, so we’ve got to really listen to lots of frequencies at once, lots of channels. The receivers we’re using today monitor 72 million channels simultaneously; you can sort of sift through the radio dial for any given star system much more quickly. The bottom line is, the search has become much, much, much faster. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it pays to go through the hay faster.

The other thing that’s changed is the astronomy. When SETI began, nobody knew whether there were planets around other stars, if they were common, or maybe only one star in a thousand had planets. Nobody knew because we hadn’t found them yet. But since that time we have. We’ve found lots of planets, and what we found is that the majority of all stars have planets. Planets are as common as cheap motels. That’s good news because it means you don’t have to wait for somebody to discover planets around some other star and aim your antennas in that direction — we can just take a whole bunch of stars based on other criteria, like here are the 10,000 nearest stars or the nearest 20,000 red dwarf stars. We’re not worried too much about whether the stars have planets or not, because we know most of them will have planets. That’s a big step.

Those are the things that have changed — the technology and the science. Both of those, from my point of view, encourage me to think that we may find something within 20 years.

That’s a really exciting prediction. In your talk, you said that any civilization that we get in contact with or receive signals from will be far more advanced than us. Why haven’t we heard from them yet?

Two things: Maybe they have, and we just haven’t pointed the antennas in the right direction and to the right frequency! That’s the whole premise of SETI — that as we sit and talk, there are radio waves going through your body that would tell you about some Klingons if only you had a big antenna pointed in the right direction and you knew the right spot on the dot.

The other part is that I don’t know that they would be motivated to contact us unless they knew we were here. Maybe it’s an expensive project for them. Like, “Hey, what do you think — should we build a big transmitter and just ping the nearest million stars for 20 years at a time?” You know, that could be a big project. But if they knew that there was intelligent life here on Earth, maybe they would try and get in touch because maybe they want to sell their used cars or something.

The facts are that they probably don’t know that we’re here. How would they know that homo sapiens exist? They could start picking up our radar, television and FM radio — signals that actually go out into space. They could do that beginning in the Second World War when all that technology was developed. But that was only 70 years ago. If they’re more than half that distance — so 35 light years away — there hasn’t been enough time for those signals to get to them and for them to say “Oh, well, we’re going to answer those guys.” That means it’s very unlikely that anybody knows we’re here yet even if they want to find us. Unless they’re very close to us, they won’t succeed. They probably lost their funding and they don’t get any respect at parties.

And by the way, you might like to mention that to your friends, next time they tell you that they’ve been abducted by aliens. You could say, “Well, that’s peculiar. You know the Earth has been here for four and a half billion years, and they just now showed up to abduct you?” I mean, why now? It’s hard to believe that they might be relentlessly targeting our society — they might be, that’s the hope. That they might just have very strong transmitters that you could pick up anywhere nearby. That’s what we’re hoping for.

It’s become an interesting public issue because Avi Loeb at Harvard likes to talk about these things, that it could be the Klingons and the space crafts. That’s not impossible, but it’s like you hearing a noise from the attic — I mean, it could be ghosts, but that’s probably not the most likely explanation. The other thing is that every time we find something unexplained in the heavens many people — or some people at least — will say it’s alien activity because that’s a handy explanation. It accounts for everything because you can always say “Well, the aliens can do anything, right?” There is that tendency to blame the aliens for everything.

This thing came in and it went right through our solar system, right around the sun. You could say, “All right, it’s just a random rock kicked out of somebody else’s solar system,” but what are the chances that that rock is going to actually hit ours? The chances of that are pretty small. It’s like standing in Park Slope, Brooklyn and throwing a dart up into the air and hitting a particular nickel lying on the sidewalk down by the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges [ed note: ~3 miles away]. It could happen but it’s pretty unlikely. Unless you throw lots of darts — if you throw a gazillion darts into the air, then you’re probably going to hit that nickel. What Loeb is saying is that either there’s just lots and lots of these rocks cruising this part of the galaxy — which could be, but that seems a little unreasonable — or maybe somebody is deliberately sending them our way. If you’re deliberately aiming at that nickel, then you have a higher chance of hitting it.

“Aliens probably don’t know that we’re here. How would they know that homo sapiens exist?”

To say that it can’t be a comet because we didn’t see any evidence of that is subject to criticism based on the fact that we didn’t see much of anything on this thing because it was found very, very late and it’s very small and very far away. We never saw this as more than a dot. There’s no reason at this point to say, “You know what, Bob, no two ways about it — this has got to be artificial!”

It seems hard to draw conclusions because no one can collect any more evidence — ʻOumuamua is on its way out at this point, right? It seems all we can do is speculate at this point.

It’s now somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. You can’t even see it with the biggest telescope anymore. Loeb admits that and says we’ll find more. We’re probably gonna find another one within a year or two, and this time, everybody will be on the alert to start studying it right away and if it’s possible, maybe send a rocket in its direction with a probe.

Has this discovery changed your approach at all?

There’s simply no shortage of intriguing new discoveries all the time. Two or three years ago, it was Tabby’s Star. Jason Wright at Penn State said, “It could be an alien megastructure,” so we turned our antennas in that direction. We didn’t find any evidence of an alien megastructure either. The point of ʻOumuamua is that you have one more case where you find something unusual that could conceivably be aliens. It would be hubris, of course, to sort of weed these things away and say, “It’s not likely to be E.T.” With that kind of reasoning, you’ll never find E.T.! It’s a reminder that the evidence may come out of left field and you shouldn’t dismiss it just because of where it came from.

It’s been almost 60 years now we’ve been pointing the antennas in the directions of nearby stars that may have habitable planets, all the usual stuff. It just seems more and more possible to me that the real thing to do is spend more time looking for other kinds of evidence — not radio signals because they may not be broadcasting radio signals our way. They might be doing all sorts of other things like hollowing out asteroids and sailing them around or building alien megastructures or constructing something big and brawny. They could be building something that’s noisy enough or big enough or bright enough — conspicuous in some way — that you could find it without having to count on them directing some sort of radio transmission our way.

“There is that tendency to blame the aliens for everything.”

Many of your contemporaries are going to come down hard on you when you speculate about something that might or might not be true, as opposed to writing a paper on something that you’ve just measured. When you do that they’re going to say: “Okay, you’re making up stories and you’re just doing it to get the column inches.” And I think that that’s myopic, because it’s those ideas that provoke a lot of investigation and eventually, in many cases, they actually solve the problem.

What is your favorite part of your job?

I enjoy thinking about the possibility of SETI. Because we haven’t found anything, it’s still all possibility. I talked to a film writer who’s writing a screenplay, and he wanted to get the aliens right — whatever that means — what can you say about them? I mean, we haven’t found any, so you can say whatever you want.

I give a lot of talks and I try to give at least one in ten to kids. I like them because they are completely honest. You talk to them and if they don’t find it interesting, they just put their heads down on the desk. Adults will not do that. But if they are interested they’ll ask any question. There’s no such thing as a stupid question for a kid. When you talk to kids, you notice that maybe one in fifty of them, something lights up; they hear something that gets their imaginations going that they’ve never heard before.

What do you think we’re looking for? Why do you think we’re so fascinated with this concept of extraterrestrial life?

I honestly think it’s a hardwired feature, just the way kids are interested in dinosaurs. You’d have a hard time finding kids that aren’t interested in dinosaurs — and why is that? Do they just have a need to know about sauropods? Well, that’s just part of their brain. We’re kind of hardwired to be afraid of falling. That’s undoubtedly a throwback to our simian existence in the trees, climbing around, and if you fell, it was probably the end of you. You have all sorts of mechanisms that tense up and react very quickly if you begin to fall. The same would be true in terms of paying attention to any creatures with big teeth. It probably pays for you to be interested in big teeth and other potential dangers.

I think that’s why kids are interested in dinosaurs, and I think we’re also interested in aliens for pretty much the same reason. Namely that, if you have no interest in whether somebody is living on the other side of that hill outside town, then you’re very likely to someday see them come over the hill and maybe take your land or kill you. It might pay you to pay some attention to potential competitors or, looking on the bright side, potential mates. I think that that’s why we’re all interested in aliens up to a certain age. It’s hard to find somebody who’s not interested in aliens at all.

]]>yasminsbelkhyrImagine If: A session of talks in partnership with the U.S. Air Forcehttps://blog.ted.com/imagine-if-a-session-of-talks-in-partnership-with-the-u-s-air-force/
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Curator Bryn Freedman invites the audience to imagine a world we all want to live in, as she kicks off the TED Salon: Imagine If, presented in partnership with the U.S. Air Force. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

The big idea: Imagination is a superpower — it allows us to push beyond perceived limits, to think beyond the ordinary and to discover a new world of possibilities.

New idea (to us anyway): We may be able to vaccinate against PTSD and other mental illnesses.

Good to be reminded: Leaders shouldn’t simply follow the pack. They need to embrace sustainability, equality, accountability — not just the whims of the market.

Brigadier General (Select) Brenda P. Cartier shares how we can balance our personalities and create more just societies. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Brenda Cartier, Director of Operations at Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and the first female Air Commando selected for the rank of general

Big idea: “Precision-guided masculinity” allows us to maintain a killer instinct without discarding the empathetic, “feminine” traits that mitigate the “collateral damage” of toxic masculinity.

How? Viewing gender as a spectrum of femininities and masculinities allows us to select traits as they fit each situation, without tying our identities to them. As we learn to balance our personalities, we become well-rounded human beings and create more just societies.

Quote of the talk: “This new narrative breaks us out of a one-size-fits-all approach to gender, where we link male bodies and masculinity and female bodies and femininity. ‘Precision-guided masculinity’ begs us to ask the question: ‘Who is it that is employing those masculine traits to protect and defend?'”

Could we put a stop to mental illnesses like depression and PTSD before they develop? Rebecca Brachman explores the potential of a new class of drugs called “resilience enhancers.” (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

Rebecca Brachman, neuroscientist, TED Fellow and pioneer in the emerging field of preventative psychopharmacology

Big idea: Brachman and her team have discovered a new class of drugs called “resilience enhancers” that could change the way we treat mental illness like depression and PTSD. These drugs wouldn’t just treat symptoms of the diseases, she says — they could prevent them from developing in the first place.

How? Brachman’s research applies the fundamental principle of vaccination to mental illness, building up a person’s ability to recover and grow after stress. For example, imagine a Red Cross volunteer going into an earthquake zone. In addition to the typhoid vaccine, she could take a resilience-enhancing drug before she leaves to protect her against PTSD. The same applies to soldiers, firefighters, ER doctors, cancer patients, refugees — anyone exposed to trauma or major life stress. The drugs have worked in preliminary tests with mice. Next up, humans.

Quote of the talk: “This is a paradigm shift in psychiatry. It’s a whole new field: preventative psychopharmacology.”

Big idea: Catastrophic events sometimes catch us by surprise, but too often we invite crises to barrel right into our lives despite countless, blaring warning signs. What keeps us from facing the reality of a situation head-on?

How? Semantics, semantics, semantics — and a healthy dose of honesty. Wucker urges us to replace the myth of the “black swan” — that rare, unforeseeable, unavoidable event — with the reality of the “gray rhino,” the common obvious catastrophes, like the bursting of a financial bubble or the end of a tempestuous relationship, that are predictable and preventable. She breaks down the factors that determine whether we run from problems or tackle them, and lays out some warning signs that you may be ignoring one of those charging rhinos right now.

Quote of the talk: “Think about the obvious challenges in your own life and how you deal with them. Do you stick your head in the ground like an ostrich and ignore the problems entirely? Do you freak out like Chicken Little over all the tiny things, but miss the big giant wolf coming at you? Or do you manage things when they’re small to keep them from going out of control?”

Curator Bryn Freedman interviews executive (and former candidate for president of Iceland) Halla Tómasdóttir about how we can transform corporate leaders and businesses for a better world. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Big idea: Corporate leaders — and the businesses they run — are in a crisis of conformity that favors not rocking the boat and ignores big issues like climate change and inequality. We need new leadership to get us out of this crisis.

How? It’s not enough for corporate leaders to simply follow the pack and narrowly define the missions of their organizations. If CEOs want to avoid the pitchforks of the masses, they must also ensure that their businesses are global citizens that embrace sustainability, equality, accountability — not just the markets.

Quote of the talk: “At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves who are we holding ourselves accountable for — and if that isn’t the next generation, I don’t know who.”

Sarah T. Stewart, planetary scientist at the University of California, Davis, and 2018 MacArthur “Genius” fellow

Big idea: How did the Moon form? Despite its proximity, we don’t actually know! Adding to the mystery: the Earth and Moon are composed of the same stuff, a rarity we’ve found nowhere else in the universe. In trying to solve the mystery, Sarah T. Stewart discovered an entirely new not-quite-planet.

How? Stewart and her team smash planets together in computer simulations to learn more about how they were created. While trying to uncover the Moon’s origin, they discovered that the early Earth may have been involved in a massive collision with a Mars-sized planet, which then created a “synestia:” a super-heated doughnut of molten material previously unknown to science, out of which the Moon was born.

Quote of the talk: “I discovered a new type of astronomical object. It’s not a planet; it’s made from planets.”

Why do teens seem to make so many bad decisions? Kashfia Rahman searches for an answer in psychological effects of risk-taking. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Big idea: Teenagers aren’t necessarily chasing thrills when they make bad decisions. Rather, repeated exposure to risk actually numbs how they make choices.

How? After wondering why her peers were constantly making silly and irresponsible decisions, Kashfia Rahman decided to conduct an experiment testing how her fellow high school students responded to risk. She found that habituation to risk — or “getting used to it” — impacts how teenagers make choices beyond their cognitive control. With this insight, she believes we can create policies that more holistically tackle high-risk behavior among teenagers.

Quote of the talk: “Unforeseen opportunities often come from risk-taking — not the hazardous negative risk-taking I studied, but the good ones, the positive risks,” she says. “The more risks I took, the more I felt capable.”

As usual, the TED community is making headlines. Below, some highlights.

A close look at the beauty and pain of hospice care.End Game, a short documentary that follows the last few days of terminally ill patients, is up for an Oscar this weekend. The heart-rending film highlights the work of doctors and caregivers — including BJ Miller — reimagining what palliative care and hospice work can be. In a column for Hollywood Reporter, Motion Picture and Television Fund head Bob Beitcher says, “End Game’s Dr. BJ Miller embodies the commitment and compassion that is crucial to cutting-edge palliative care, helping families and patients travel the difficult journey together.” The film is streaming on Netflix. (Watch Miller’s TED Talk.)

Also up for an Oscar? Period. End of Sentence.Entrepreneur Arunachalam Murugananthamkickstarted a cultural revolution in India with his sanitary pad machine, and now the tale is a compelling Netflix documentary. The Oscar-nominated short doc explains how Muruganantham’s invention empowers rural women, providing them with both clean sanitary napkins and reliable employment, while reducing stigma. “The strongest creature created by God in the world is not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger … the girl,” says Muruganantham in the film. (Watch Muruganantham’s TED Talk.)

Nita Farahany co-leads AI seminars for congressional staff. Alongside Vincent Conitzer and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ethicist Nita Farahany kicked off the three-part Duke in DC seminar series on artificial intelligence for a congressional audience. Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, spoke on the potential impact of AI and human collaboration on policy. Questions ranged from predictive policing methodologies to the role of government in AI development. As quoted on Duke’s website, Farahany said, “Because AI is still in such a nascent phase of its development, and because we as a society are going to increasingly face ethical and legal dilemmas from its use and development, there is an important role for government in the field.” (Watch Farahany’s TED Talk.)

Stroke of insight: A choral work based on Jill Bolte Taylor. Identical twin composers the Brothers Balliett have written a new three-part piece for a choral orchestral and mezzo soprano called Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses — based on neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book and TED Talk. The Cecilia Choir of New York will premiere the piece with soloist Amanda Lynn Bottoms at Carnegie Hall in early May. Tickets are available now. (Watch Taylor’s TED Talk.)

Mark Kelly runs for US Senate. Retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly has launched a campaign in Arizona’s 2020 senatorial special election. Kelly and his wife, former congressional rep Gabby Giffords, announced the campaign with a video highlighting Kelly’s career as an astronaut and pilot, his family roots and his pivot toward gun control activism following an assassination attempt on Giffords in 2011. Kelly describes the issues he cares for most including health care, job and economic growth and the environment. “We’ve seen this retreat from science and data and facts, and if we don’t take these issues seriously, we can’t solve these problems,” he says. (Watch Kelly and Giffords’ TED Talk.)

The Explorers Club Medal awarded to Kenneth Lacovara. For his discoveries of some quite remarkable dinosaur fossils, paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara will be honored at the 115th Explorers Club Annual Dinner. The Explorers Club Medal, the group’s highest award, is presented to those who have made “extraordinary contributions directly in the field of exploration, scientific research, or to the welfare of humanity.” Other TEDsters who have received the honor include Sylvia Earle, Jane Goodall and James Cameron. In a statement for Rowan University Lacovara said, “I’m honored and humbled to be joining a group of medalists that includes so many of the heroes and adventurers who inspired me as a child … I am fortunate to have played a small role in uncovering our wondrous past.” (Watch Lacovara’s TED Talk or see his TED Book, Why Dinosaurs Matter.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

]]>16253792344_bd525aea97_oyasminsbelkhyrTED original podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant is back with Season 2 (and a sneak peek trailer)https://blog.ted.com/ted-original-podcast-worklife-with-adam-grant-is-back-with-season-2-and-a-sneak-peek-trailer/
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 19:29:05 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=109050[…]]]>

The breakaway hit returns March 5, delving deeper into how we work and the psychology of making work not suck

Organizational psychologist, bestselling author and TED speaker Adam Grant returns March 5 with Season 2 of WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED Original podcast series that takes you inside the minds of some of the world’s most unusual professionals to discover the keys to a better work life. Listen to a sneak peek trailer now and subscribe.

WorkLife was among Apple Podcasts’ most downloaded new shows of 2018, and the trailer gives a taste of what’s in store for 2019 – from celebrating the potential of black sheep in the workplace (as Pixar did) to bouncing back from rejection and examining whether it’s actually possible to create an a*hole-free office.

Each new WorkLife episode dives into different remarkable, and often unexpected, workplaces – among them the US Navy, Duolingo and the Norwegian Olympic alpine ski team. Adam’s immersive interviews take place in the field as well as the studio, with a mission to empower listeners with insightful and actionable ideas that they can apply to their own work.

“I’m exploring ways to make work more creative and more fun,” says Adam, the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take. “We spend almost a quarter of our lives in our jobs, and I want to figure out how to make all that time worth your time.”

TED’s continued expansion of its content programming beyond its signature TED-talk format in both the audio and video space. Other recent TED original content launches include The TED Interview, a podcast hosted by Head of TED Chris Anderson that features deep dives with TED speakers; Small Thing Big Idea, a Facebook Watch video series about everyday designs that changed the world; and the Indian primetime live-audience television series TED Talks India: Nayi Soch, hosted by Bollywood star and TED speaker Shah Rukh Khan.

WorkLife with Adam Grant Season 2 debuts Tuesday, March 5 on Apple Podcasts, the TED Android app, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Season 2 features eight episodes, roughly 30 minutes each. It’s sponsored by Accenture, Bonobos, Hilton and JPMorgan Chase & Co. New episodes will be made available every Tuesday.

GlobalXplorer’s first expedition took users to Peru, where they searched 150,000 kilometers of land and identified thousands of features of archaeological interest, including more than 50 new Nazca Lines and 324 sites determined by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture to be of high interest. The exploration of India will be even more sweeping in scope.

India is a large country with 29 states, spread out over 3.287 million square kilometers. Working with the Archaeological Survey of India (a branch of India’s Ministry of Culture) and alongside Tata Trusts and the National Geographic Society, GlobalXplorer’s new expedition will cover the entire country, state by state. This vast work will be accomplished with the help of machine learning. Over the past year, GlobalXplorer has been working with technology partners to train AI to weed out tiles that either contain no archaeological features or that are not able to be properly searched because of dense cloud cover or an impenetrable landscape. Platform users will take on the next step: looking at tiles with potential signs of archaeological features. Searching this most promising fraction of tiles will be no small task. Parcak estimates that, with the help of the crowd, this mapping will be done in less than three years.

“Folks we are about to announce country #2 for @Global_Xplorer I am SO excited. What’s your guess?” she tweeted at 6:30am this morning. Then later she revealed: “So thrilled to be able to share: Globalxplorer will be heading to India next!”

The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights.

Stacey Abrams responds to the US State of the Union. Politician Stacey Abrams spoke from Atlanta on behalf of the Democratic party following the State of the Union address. In her speech, she focused on the fight against bigotry, bipartisanship in a turbulent America and voter rights. The right to vote is especially important to Abrams — last November, she lost the Georgia gubernatorial election by 55,000 votes, a loss that some pundits have attributed to voter suppression. “The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters,” she said. “In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for, and with, one another.” Watch the full speech on The New York Times website or read the transcript at USA Today. (Watch Abrams’ TED Talk.)

Remembering Emily Levine. The extraordinary humorist and philosopher Emily Levine has passed away following a battle with lung cancer. Reflecting on life and death, Levine said, “’I am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all of its constituent parts, to nature, to reorganize into another pattern. To me, that is so exciting, and it makes me even more grateful to be part of that process.” Read our full tribute to Levine on our blog.(Watch Levin’s TED Talk.)

Could you cut the tech giants from your life? In a new multimedia series from Gizmodo, journalist Kashmir Hill details her six-week experiment quitting Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google — and shares surprising insights on how entwined these companies are in daily life. With help from technologist Dhruv Mehrotra, Hill blocked access to one company for a week at a time using a custom VPN (virtual private network), culminating with a final week of excluding all five tech companies. In just her first week of cutting out Amazon, Hill’s VPN logged over 300,000 blocked pings to Amazon servers! Check out the whole series on Gizmodo. (Watch Hill’s TED Talk.)

Customizable vegetables now for sale. Grubstreet has a new profile on Row 7, the seed company co-founded by chef Dan Barber that wants to change the way farmers, chefs and breeders collaborate and connect. Alongside breeder Michael Mazourek and seeds dealer Matthew Goldfarb, Barber hopes to design seeds that have the flavors chefs want, along with the qualities (like high yield and disease resistance) that farmers are looking for. “We’re trying to deepen the context for the seeds, and this conversation between breeders and the chefs,” Barber said. By prioritizing taste and nutrition, Row 7 plans to engineer ever-evolving seed collections that meet the needs of both farmers and chefs. Row 7’s first seed collection is now available for purchase. (Watch Barber’s TED Talk.)

A promising new report on tobacco divestment.The Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge, led by oncologist Bronwyn King, has a new signatory: Genus Capital Investment, a leading Canadian fossil-free investment firm. Genus released a new report — based on a six-year study — about the financial impacts of divesting from tobacco stocks and removing tobacco from its portfolios. They found that over the past 20 years, tobacco divestment did not negatively affect index portfolios, and that in the past five years, portfolios that excluded tobacco actually outperformed the market. In a statement, King said, “This new research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that investors do not need to invest in tobacco to achieve excellent returns.” Spearheaded by Tobacco Free Portfolios and the United Nations Environment Programme, the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge was launched last year and has over 140 signatories and supporters. (Watch King’s TED Talk.)

An HBO feature on superhuman tech. On Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, bionics designer Hugh Herr presented his team’s latest prosthetics and explained why he thinks bionics will soon revolutionize sports. Herr spoke to Soledad O’Brien about a future of enhanced athletic ability, saying “There’s going to be new sports … power basketball, power swimming, power climbing. It’ll be a reinvention of sports and it’ll be so much fun.” In a teaser clip, O’Brien tried on a pair of lower-leg exoskeletons developed at Herr’s MIT lab; the full episode can be viewed on HBO. (Watch Herr’s TED Talk.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

“You have to understand that we don’t live in Newton’s clockwork universe anymore. We live in a banana peel universe, and we won’t ever be able to know everything or control everything or predict everything.” Emily Levine speaks at TED2018. Photo: Jason Redmond / TED

“That’s what’s so extraordinary about life: It’s a cycle of generation, degeneration, regeneration.”

The humorist Emily Levine has died, after an extraordinary life spent questioning the very nature of reality. A philosopher-comic, she tore apart classics and physics and pop culture, and then, in trickster fashion, stuck them together in ways that created not just a shock of recognition but (as she explained herself back in 2002) a shock of re-cognition, of thinking in a new way. Her goal was to short-circuit your mind, to shake you out of your silly old and/or thinking with a little bit of and/and. Not for nothing did she call herself “the Evel Knievel of mental leaps.”

She worked as a TV writer and producer, a filmmaker and as a connector, a locus for like-minded kooks. She was a force, a word that we hope will make sense on many levels.

Most recently, she turned her attention to the process of dying itself, as she faced down a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. As always, it sent her searching through the widest possible array of sources. She read quantum physics (” — well, I read an email from someone who’d read it, but — “), she re-visited Hannah Arendt and an old joke, and tossed everything into the blender of her sharp wit. And it all began to make sense, life, living, dying, death.In her own words: “’I’ am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all of its constituent parts, to nature, to reorganize into another pattern. To me, that is so exciting, and it makes me even more grateful to be part of that process.”

]]>27567070438_b4f963b3bf_oemilytedLaunching today: The Way We Work, in partnership with Dropboxhttps://blog.ted.com/launching-today-the-way-we-work-in-partnership-with-dropbox/
Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:19:06 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=109008[…]]]>

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of TED’s latest original video series, The Way We Work. In this 8-episode series, a range of business leaders and thinkers offer their direct, practical wisdom and insight into how we can adapt and thrive amid changing workplace conventions.

The TED community is busy with new projects and news — below, some highlights.

A virtual reality dance party at Sundance. Musician and comedian Reggie Watts and artist Kiira Benzing debuted their new project “Runnin’” at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibit. “Runnin’” is an “immersive, interactive music video” backed with a hypnotic techno beat by Wajatta (the musical duo of Watts and composer John Tejada). The project welcomes players into a “retro-future world,” coupling VR technology and the magic of dance into an experience of pure creativity. In an interview with the Sundance Institute, Watts said, “I always wanted Wajatta to be able to create videos that really embody the music in a fun way.” Check out the artist feature for a sneak peek at the visuals for the project and listen to a live performance of “Runnin’.”At the New Frontier exhibit, Nonny de la Peña also premiered a virtual reality photo booth and data artists Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin contributed to a project called “Emergence”. (Watch Watts’ TED Talk, de la Peña’s TED Talk, Milk’s TED Talk and Kobin’s TED Talk.)

Global science commission urges radical, planet-wide diet. The EAT-Lancet Commission, co-chaired by sustainability expert Johan Rockström and scientist Walter Willett, released a new report on the state of food production, environmental degradation and global sustainability. The commission, which is composed of 37 leading scientists from around the world, warns of serious consequences to current consumption patterns and offers a newly designed “planetary health diet” to help accelerate a “radical transformation of the global food system.” According to the report summary, the dietary shift will require doubling the consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts globally — and reducing sugar and red meat consumption by more than half. “To have any chance of feeding 10 billion people in 2050 within planetary boundaries, we must adopt a healthy diet, slash food waste and invest in technologies that reduce environmental impacts,” said Rockström in an interview with AFP. (Watch Rockström’s TED Talk.)

#WeKnowYouCarecampaign launches. Advocacy organization Caring Across Generations, co-directed by activist Ai-jen Poo, launched its latest campaign, #WeKnowYouCare, which celebrates the 16 million men who act as caregivers for their families in America. By sharing video narratives from male caregivers, the campaign aims to highlight nuanced stories of masculinity and address why men who caregive are particularly vulnerable to isolation and lack of support. “Men were actually really quite harmed by the gender norms related to caregiving, in that it’s harder for them to ask for help, it’s harder for them to actually get the support that they need to do what is a very emotionally challenging — and otherwise [difficult] — thing to do,” said Poo in an interview with Bustle. (Watch Poo’s TED Talk.)

The hidden meanings of laughter. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott dives deep into the wonder of laughter on an episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast; alongside host Shankar Vedantam, Scott discusses the animal kingdom, social bonds and the bizarre and beautiful science behind laughter. “Wherever you go in the world, you’ll encounter laughter. It has at its heart the same meaning. It’s very truthful, and it’s telling you something very positive. And that’s always a sort of wonderful thing to encounter,” she said. (Listen to the full episode.) (Watch Scott’s TED Talk.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

]]>5762842304_411c603690_oyasminsbelkhyrEducation Everywhere: A night of talks about the future of learning, in partnership with TED-Edhttps://blog.ted.com/education-everywhere-a-night-of-talks-about-the-future-of-learning-in-partnership-with-ted-ed/
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 23:17:41 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=108965[…]]]>

TED-Ed’s Stephanie Lo (left) and TED’s own Cloe Shasha co-host the salon Education Everywhere, on January 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York City. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

The big idea: We’re relying on educators to teach more skills than ever before — for a future we can’t quite predict.

Awesome animations: Courtesy of TED-Ed, whose videos are watched by more than two million learners around the world every day

New idea (to us anyway): Poverty is associated with a smaller cortical surface of the brain.

Good to be reminded: Education doesn’t just happen in the classroom. It happens online, in our businesses, our social systems and beyond.

Little Nora Brown, who picked up the ukulele at age six, brings her old-time banjo sound to the TED stage. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

The talks in brief:

Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and director of the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab at Columbia University

Big idea: We’ve learned that poverty has a measurable effect on the cortical surface of the brain, an area associated with intelligence. What could we do about that?

How: Experience can change children’s brains, and the brain is very sensitive to experience in early childhood. Noble’s lab wants to know if giving impoverished families more money might change brain function in their preschool kids.

Quote of the talk: “The brain is not destiny, and if a child’s brain can be changed, then anything is possible.”

Olympia Della Flora, associate superintendent for school development for Stamford Public Schools in Connecticut, and the former principal at Ohio Avenue Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio

How: With help from local colleges and experts, the teachers at Ohio Avenue Elementary learned new ways to improve kids’ behavior (which in turn helped with learning). Rather than just reacting to kids when they acted out, teachers built healthy coping strategies into the day — simple things like stopping for brain breaks, singing songs and even doing yoga poses — to help kids navigate their emotions in and out of the classroom.

Quote of the talk: “Small changes make huge differences, and it’s possible to start right now. You don’t need bigger budgets or grand, strategic plans. You simply need smarter ways to think about using what you have, where you have it.”

Marcos Silva, a TED-Ed Innovative Educator and public school teacher in McAllen, Texas; and Ana Rodriguez, a student who commutes three hours every day to school from Mexico

Big idea: Understanding what’s going on with students outside of school is important, too.

How: Silva grew up bringing the things he learned at school about American culture and the English language back to his parents, who were immigrants from Mexico. Now a teacher, he’s helping students like Ana Rodriquez to explore their culture, community and identity.

Quote of the talk: “Good grades are important, but it’s also important to feel confident and empowered.”

Joel Levin, a technology teacher and the cofounder of MinecraftEdu

Big idea: Educators can use games to teach any subject — and actually get kids excited to be in school.

How: Levin is a big fan of Minecraft, the game that lets players build digital worlds out of blocks with near-endless variety. In the classroom, Minecraft and similar games can be used to spark creativity, celebrate ingenuity and get kids to debate complex topics like government, poverty and power.

Quote of the talk: “One of my daughters even learned to spell because she wanted to communicate within the game. She spelled ‘home.'”

Jarrell E. Daniels offers a new vision for the criminal justice system centered on education and growth. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

How: A few weeks before his release from state prison, Daniels took a unique course called Inside Criminal Justice, where he learned in a classroom alongside prosecutors and police officers, people he couldn’t imagine having anything in common with. In class, Daniels connected with and told his story to those in power — and has since found a way to make an impact on the criminal justice system through the power of conversation.

Quote of the talk: “It is through education that we will arrive at a truth that is inclusive and unites us all in a pursuit of justice.”

Liz Kleinrock, third-grade teacher and diversity coordinator at a charter school in Los Angeles

Big idea: It’s not easy to talk with kids about taboo subjects like race and equity, but having these conversations early prevents bigger problems in the future.

How: Like teaching students to read, speaking about tough topics requires breaking down concepts and words until they make sense. It doesn’t mean starting with an incredibly complex idea, like why mass incarceration exists — it means starting with the basics, like what’s fair and what isn’t. It requires practice, doing it every day until it’s easier to do.

Quote of the talk: “Teaching kids about equity is not about teaching them what to think. It’s about giving them the tools, strategies and opportunities to practice how to think.”

The TED Fellows program turns 10 in 2019 — and to mark this important milestone, we’re excited to kick off the year of celebration by announcing the impressive new group of TED2019 Fellows and Senior Fellows! This year’s TED Fellows class represents 12 countries across four continents; they’re leaders in their fields — ranging from astrodynamics to policing to conservation and beyond — and they’re looking for new ways to collaborate and address today’s most complex challenges.

The TED Fellows program supports extraordinary, iconoclastic individuals at work on world-changing projects, providing them with access to the global TED platform and community, as well as new tools and resources to amplify their remarkable vision. The TED Fellows program now includes 472 Fellows who work across 96 countries, forming a powerful, far-reaching network of artists, scientists, doctors, activists, entrepreneurs, inventors, journalists and beyond, each dedicated to making our world better and more equitable. Read more about their visionary work on the TED Fellows blog.

Below, meet the group of Fellows and Senior Fellows who will join us at TED2019, April 15-19, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Alexis Gambis (USA | France)Filmmaker + biologist
Filmmaker and biologist creating films that merge scientific data with narrative in an effort to make stories of science more human and accessible.

Ali Al-Ibrahim (Syria | Sweden)Investigative journalist
Journalist reporting on the front lines of the Syrian conflict and creating films about the daily struggles of Syrians.

Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin (USA)Scholar + artist
Scholar and artist working across academia and the entertainment industry to transform archival material about black identity into theatrical performances.

Arnav Kapur (USA | India)Technologist
Inventor creating wearable AI devices that augment human cognition and give voice to those who have lost their ability to speak.

Wild fishing cats live in the Mangrove forests of southeast Asia, feeding on fish and mangrove crab in the surrounding waters. Not much is known about this rare species. Conservationist Ashwin Naidu and his organization, Fishing Cat Conservancy, are working to protect these cats and their endangered habitat. (Photo: Anjani Kumar/Fishing Cat Conservancy)

In Tokyo Medical University for Rejected Women, multimedia artist Hiromi Ozaki explores the systematic discrimination of female applicants to medical school in Japan. (Photo: Hiromi Ozaki)

Hiromi Ozaki (Japan | UK)ArtistArtist creating music, film and multimedia installations that explore the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies.

Ivonne Roman (USA)Police captain
Police captain and co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Academy, an organization working to increase the recruitment and retention of women in policing.

Jess Kutch (USA)Labor entrepreneur
Co-founder of Coworker.org, a labor organization for the 21st century helping workers solve problems and advance change through an open online platform.

Leila Pirhaji (Iran | USA)Biotech entrepreneur
Computational biologist and founder of ReviveMed, a biotech company pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and treatment of metabolic diseases.

In one of her projects, documentary photographer Kiana Hayeri took a rare, intimate look at the lives of single mothers in Afghanistan, capturing their struggles and strengths. Here, two children hang a picture of their father. (Photo: Kiana Hayeri)

An illustration of Tungsenia, an early relative of lungfish. Paleobiologist Lauren Sallan studies the vast fossil records to explore how extinctions of fish like this have affected biodiversity in the earth’s oceans. (Photo: Nobu Tamura)

Lauren Sallan (USA)Paleobiologist
Paleobiologist using the vast fossil record as a deep time database to explore how mass extinctions, environmental change and shifting ecologies impact biodiversity.

Premesh Chandran (Malaysia)Journalism entrepreneur
Cofounder and CEO of Malaysiakini.com, the most popular independent online news organization in Malaysia, which is working to create meaningful political change.

At TED Salon: Up for Debate, held January 16, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY, five speakers shared ideas for tackling society’s thorniest issues, joined via video by people worldwide. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

The world is more interconnected than ever before — and the need to bridge political and ideological divides has never been more urgent. Now is the time to examine the rules of genuine human engagement, to find common ground for respectful, passionate discourse and to celebrate civility.

That’s the idea behind TED Salon: Up for Debate, a session of talks hosted by TED Residency director Cyndi Stivers and presented in partnership with Doha Debates — a newly revitalized media venture that seeks to inspire action and collaborative solutions to global challenges through debate. On Wednesday, January 16, five speakers took the stage of the TED World Theater in New York City; meanwhile, five groups of people from around the world joined the session live via Shared_Studios‘s “Portals” project. In reclaimed shipping containers outfitted with AV equipment, the groups in Doha, Qatar; Kigali, Rwanda; Herat, Afghanistan; Hardy County, West Virginia; and Mexico City were invited to share their thoughts on hot topics in their parts of the world and respond to the talks in New York in real time.

After an opening song performed by the Brooklyn Nomads, the session kicked off with journalist Steven Petrow.

Civility shouldn’t be a dirty word. What does it mean to be a “civilist” — an archaic title describing an “individual who tries to live by a moral code” — in a world where “civility” is a dirty word? Voices on the right conflate civility with political correctness, believing it to be a tool for the left to demonize their opposition. On the left, civility is considered immoral if it allows for the acquiescence to injustice — think of Martin Luther King Jr. or the Suffragists, who made changes by speaking out. But does civility actually stifle debate? As Petrow sees it, civility doesn’t mean appeasement or avoiding important differences; it means listening and talking about those differences with respect. Reasonable discussions are crucial to a healthy democracy, he says, while hate speech, cyberbullying and threats are not; in fact, they suppress conversation by telling us, “Shut up or else.” What we need now are rules of engagement — “a Geneva Convention of civility to become better citizens.” He offers three ways citizens can work toward the greater good: de-escalate language; challenge policies and positions, not character; and don’t mistake decorum for civility.

Rana Abdelhamid shares three ingredients to starting an international movement and her story of starting a self-defense class in her community. She speaks at TEDSalon: Up for Debate, January 16, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

The secret recipe to starting a movement. According to human rights organizer Rana Abdelhamid, there are three ingredients to creating an international movement: Start with what you know, start with who you know and, most important, start with joy. After a stranger aggressively tried to remove her hijab, the 16-year-old Abdelhamid (who happens to be a first-degree black belt) began teaching self-defense to women and girls in a community center basement. But she realized that she didn’t want the class to focus on fear — instead, she wanted her students to experience the class as an exercise in mental and physical well-being. That one class has evolved into Malikah, a grassroots organization spanning 17 cities in 12 countries that offers security and self-defense training that’s specific to wherever a person may live and how they walk through the world.

Audience members in a “Portal” in Doha, Qatar, speak live with salon host Cyndi Stivers, sharing their experiences with the media in their home country. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Next up, coming to us live from Doha, Qatar, a group of students who’ve gathered in a Shared_Studios Portal explains how the media has shaped their world — from employment to health to education and beyond. Some outlets have started promoting hate speech and fake news, they say, manipulating people in dangerous ways and sparking a debate about the role the media should play. We turn to the Portal in Mexico City, where students explain how, on the heels of their country’s recent transformative election, it’s becoming more important than ever to work together and understand that humanity is part of one force: “Now, kindness is the ultimate intelligence.”

Real dialogue is possible. Journalist Eve Pearlman is on a mission to bridge the political divide in the United States. With the help of her friend and fellow journalist Jeremy Hay, she founded Spaceship Media, dedicated to bringing together people on different sides of a political spectrum to create “dialogue journalism.” Their first dialogue asked Trump supporters from Alabama how they think Clinton voters in California perceive them — and vice versa. “By identifying stereotypes at the start of each project, we find that people begin to see the simplistic and often mean-spirited caricatures they carry,” Pearlman says, “and after that, we can move into the process of real conversation.” Pearlman and Hay want to bring trust back into journalism — moving away from clickbait reporting and toward transparency and care for the communities these journalists serve. When journalists and citizens come together in discussion, people that otherwise would have never met end up speaking with each other — and feeling grateful to know first-hand that the other side isn’t crazy, Pearlman says: “Real engagement across difference: this is the salve that our democracy sorely needs.”

Are all millennials lazy, entitled avocado-toast lovers? Author Reniqua Allen calls on us to take a broader, more nuanced view — and specifically, to listen to the 43 percent of millennials who are non-white. She speaks at TEDSalon: Up for Debate, January 16, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Why we need to listen to millennials — all of them. Millennials aren’t a monolith, says author Reniqua Allen, but too often, we treat them like they are. By simplifying millennials to a worn-out stereotype of lazy, entitled avocado-toast lovers, Allen warns that we erase the vast multitude of millennial backgrounds and experiences, particularly the unique experiences of black millennials. Millennials are the largest, most diverse adult population in the country, she says, and 43 percent are non-white. While researching her book It Was All a Dream, Allen heard from black millennials like Joelle, who couldn’t attend her dream school because it was too expensive; AB, an actor who fears racial bias is limiting his success in Hollywood; and Simon, a tech company CFO who gave up a passion for photography because he didn’t have the financial safety net to take the risk. “These kind of stories — the quieter, more subtle ones — reveal the unique and often untold story of black millennials, show how even dreaming may differ between communities,” Allen says. Though black creatives, politicians and athletes are thriving, racist structures and ideologies haven’t gone away — and they affect the everyday experiences of millennials across the country.

Next up, we check in with Kigali, Rwanda. The Rwandans in the Portal say that their most pressing issue is the trade war between Rwanda and the US. In 2016, the Rwandan government increased import duties on used clothing from the US in order to encourage domestic clothing production. Since then, the US has suspended certain trade benefits Rwanda receives under the African Growth and Opportunity Act — namely, those allowing Rwanda to export goods to the US without tariffs. They remind us that Rwanda is a young country; what’s on their mind is the need to build up self-dependence, in large part through the economic ability to dictate the prices of the goods they trade with the world. Meanwhile, in Herat, Afghanistan, participants in the Portal share how their community is trying to adapt to the international attitude. They’re eager for technology and social media to help meet and connect with people from other countries; they say that social media, in particular, has opened a gateway for women in Afghanistan.

Tweeting at a terrorist. Twitter is frequently “where you go to get yelled at by people you don’t know,” says counterterrorism expert and blogger Clint Watts. But it can also be a great place to interact with someone who’d otherwise be difficult to talk with — someone like Omar Hammami, a rapping terrorist who traded tweets with Watts in 2013. Hammami grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and Watts notes that had they ever met, “We probably would’ve shared a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.” Instead, Hammami joined the notorious terror group al Shabaab, where his Western background was exploited as propaganda — especially when he became a viral celebrity for his pro-jihad YouTube raps. Hammami eventually fell out with al Shabaab and, hunted by both counterterrorists and the mujahideen, hid in Somalia, where, bored and craving attention, he began obsessively tweeting. Using his training as a negotiator, Watts kept him talking, asking pointed questions about Hammami’s beliefs and goals in between banter about Chinese food and Reading Rainbow. Watts is clear to note, though, that they were never friends. Still, as Hammami’s murderous ex-comrades closed in to assassinate him, Watts wondered: “Did his thoughts reach for jihad and his faith, or did he reach for his family, his friends, his life back in Alabama, and the path he didn’t choose?”

The salon comes to a close with a Portal appearance from students in Hardy County, West Virginia. The most contentious topic in their area? Resistance to change. As one of the participants says: “People hold so tight to their family traditions and what they learned growing up.” Yet hope remains. The students see themselves as activists, looking to help those in their community who are brought down by discrimination and lack of acceptance.

]]>tedsalon_upfordebate_20190116_1rl3632oliverfriedmanJim Yong Kim steps down from the World Bank and other news from the TED communityhttps://blog.ted.com/jim-yong-kim-steps-down-from-the-world-bank-and-other-news-from-the-ted-community/
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 17:42:41 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=108872[…]]]>

2019 is starting off big for the TED community — below, some highlights.

Jim Yong Kim resigns from the World Bank. In an unexpected move, Jim Yong Kim announced that he will be stepping down from his position as President of the World Bank by the end of the month. According to The New York Times, he will be joining a development-focused private investment fund, and plans to rejoin the board of Partners in Health, the nonprofit he co-founded in 1987. In a statement, Kim said, “It has been a great honor to serve as president of this remarkable institution, full of passionate individuals dedicated to the mission of ending extreme poverty in our lifetime.” (Watch Kim’s TED Talk.)

Feminist icon considered for BBC Wales statue. TV writer Elaine Morgan is one of five women being considered for the BBC’s Hidden Heroines statue project. Known for her blockbuster 30-year television writing career and for her book The Descent of Woman, which foregrounded women in the story of human evolution, Morgan disrupted male-dominated fields to forge her path in media. (She is also known for promoting a controversial theory that humans evolved from aquatic apes.) The statue would be the first of a real woman in Wales; the BBC has produced a learning resource kit on Morgan and the four other heroines. The decision will be made by public vote toward the end of January 2019. (Watch Morgan’s TED Talk.)

BAFTA nomination for a daring documentary. Free Solo, a film that documented rock climber Alex Honnold’s death-defying 2017 summit of El Capitan in Yosemite Park, was nominated for a BAFTA. Produced by National Geographic and Image Nation Abu Dhabi, the film follows Hannold over two years of zealous preparation, which culminated in his successful rope-free climb of the 3,200-foot El Capitan Wall. The trailer is available here; the award winners will be announced in February. (Watch Honnold’s TED Talk.)

A new study on Earth’s only walking fish. Ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty is co-leading a new study at Louisiana State University on Cryptotora thamicola, the blind cavefish that can walk on land. The study, in collaboration with New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Florida, seeks to better understand how these fish have evolved. Chakrabarty’s team at LSU will perform genomic sequencing in order to discover more about the molecular makeup and history of the cavefish. In a statement, Chakrabarty said, “Combining robotics, genomics and CT morphological examinations, this collaboration could help us visualize evolution in a brand new light.” (Watch Chakrabarty’s TED Talk.)

A new interview on being brave. Girls Who Code founder and CEO Reshma Saujani spoke to the American Booksellers Association this week on her forthcoming book Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder. “My hope is that by sharing my story, and the lessons and stories I have learned from women across the country, booksellers will leave my talk empowered and excited to go flex their own bravery muscles.” she said. Saujani will also give a keynote speech at the ABA’s Winter Institute later this month. (Watch Saujani’s TED Talk.)

Seeking answers in an untimely death. Alongside producer Lina Misitzis, journalist Jon Ronson launched The Last Days of August, a new podcast investigating the death of adult entertainment star August Ames. In 2017, Ames faced severe backlash to a tweet perceived by many as homophobic; the following day, she committed suicide. Ames’ death sparked dialogue in the entertainment industry around cyberbullying, homophobia, and the impacts of social media. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ronson said, “We had stumbled into a story where what we had to do was figure out the truth of why August died. We look at the huge things and the very small, subtle, nuanced, psychological things that contributed to her death. I can hope that people can see the humanness of that.” The full podcast can be streamed on Audible. (Watch Ronson’s TED Talk here.)

An advice column that “prescribes” poetry. Sarah Kay — alongside fellow resident poets Kaveh Akbar and Claire Schwartz — has begun Poetry Rx, a poetry-focused column for The Paris Review. Each week, the poets take turns suggesting the perfect poems to match specific emotions that readers write in about (such as commemorating a bittersweet accomplishment, exploring vulnerability, or other moments in the human condition). Read the full column here. (Watch Kay’s TED Talk.)

]]>34197539941_8c090c9ccc_oyasminsbelkhyrA new year, and new progress from The Audacious Projecthttps://blog.ted.com/a-year-of-progress-from-the-audacious-project/
Sat, 12 Jan 2019 13:59:29 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=108855[…]]]>

Blandina Herman of Tanzania sits with her granddaughter amid part of the maize she harvested in 2018. Before enrolling with One Acre Fund, she harvested seven bags a year. She now harvests more than double that. Photo: Courtesy of One Acre Fund

In 2018, TED launched The Audacious Project — a new model with the goal of changing the way that change is made. By surfacing big, bold, ambitious ideas with the possibility to change systems and affect millions of lives, and then bringing together groups of donors and the public to support them, the program is already having incredible impact. Read on for updates on the first Audacious projects and their progress last year.

Celebrating 11 sites for The Bail Project

Over the course of last year, The Bail Project opened sites in nine new locations beyond its initial two — with its latest in Spokane, Washington, and Indianapolis, Indiana. With local teams of bail disruptors at each of these sites working hard to make sure that each person bailed out has what they need to return it to court — and to ease back into their lives with dignity — the organization has freed 3,300 people, reuniting them with their families and restoring the presumption of innocence so they can make decisions about their cases from a place of freedom rather than desperation. But beyond that, founder Robin Steinberg has helmed a sea change, making more and more people recognize that cash bail creates a two-tier criminal justice system — one for the rich and one for everyone else — and sharing The Bail Project’s vision of a more equitable alternative. Check out The Bail Project on Dateline. In addition, listen to Robin’s in-depth conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on The TED Interview, or watch her recent Q&A at TEDxKCWomen about how cash bail affects women specifically.

Bail Project volunteers in Louisville, Kentucky, put together care bags to send home with clients. They include water, snacks and basic toiletries. Photo: Courtesy of The Bail Fund

As climate outlook darkens, EDF takes action

In the fall of 2018, a special report from climate experts across the globe stressed that, to avoid a crisis by 2040, humanity must take action now. MethaneSAT is poised to be a key player, and last year, EDF made big progress toward launching this satellite to map and measure global methane emissions. In addition to building their leadership team and validating the satellite’s design, they secured commitments from oil and gas companies to reduce their methane leaks. And since the start of this year, they’ve announced that two leading aerospace industry companies are now under competitive contract to refine the design and decide which will actually build MethaneSAT. 2018 was a year that brought a lot of attention to methane as a key environmental issue — California committed to reducing its methane emissions, and both Canada and Mexico issued ambitious regulations to limit emissions from oil and gas companies. Check out EDF’s 2018 year in review to see how MethaneSAT fits into the organization’s larger strategy and how it will enable even more action on this front, with a goal of reducing global methane emissions from the oil and gas industry 45% by 2025.

Major new funding for trachoma elimination

Sightsavers spent 2018 building on the momentum generated by the launch of The Audacious Project. In December, they announced their Accelerate Trachoma Elimination Programme, a now-$105 million fund dedicated to their idea of ending blinding trachoma, and they shared this news onstage at the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100. This new program is unprecedented in scope, and will help eliminate trachoma in at least 10 countries while speeding up progress in others. Read about it in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. And check out these inspiring stories from Sightsavers’ network: Caroline Harper’s account of how taking a midlife gap year helped her find her calling, and the story of ophthalmic nurse Givemore Mafukidze, who lives in northern Zimbabwe and carries out eye health screenings.

Givemore Mafukidze has been an ophthalmic nurse for a decade, and each day travels to villages in his district to give eye screenings. “It makes me very happy to see a child with trachoma being treated,” he says. Photo: Courtesy of Sightsavers

Toward the Summer of Selma

In 2018, T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison of GirlTrek were named Game Changers by Women’s Health magazine, had The Root applaud them for their “literal movement for Black Women,” and were featured in a NowThis video that took more than 8 million viewers along the way for their 100-mile retracing of Harriet Tubman’s path of the Underground Railroad. In every month of last year’s walking season, GirlTrek registered more than 5,000 new trekkers. At the same time, the organization kicked off a 12-month, 50-city tour called the #RoadtoSelma, holding teach-ins across the US in anticipation of 2019’s Summer of Selma. The big event will be held in late May. It will begin with a trek along the historic 54-mile path from Selma to Montgomery taken by Civil Rights Movement leaders in 1965, and will end with a three-day festival — from May 24 to 27, 2019 — that promises to be the “Woodstock of Black Girl Healing.”

New views of the ocean’s twilight zone

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) kicked off its unprecedented exploration of the ocean’s twilight zone in 2018. Its first expedition launched a new vehicle, the Deep-See, and brought back more than 22 terabytes of data plus a haul of specimens and a wealth of new information from this largely unexplored part of the ocean. Check out The New York Times’ look at some of the most interesting findings. Meanwhile, a second expedition — NASA EXPORTS — is bringing new insights into the role that the twilight zone plays in Earth’s climate system by helping transport carbon from the ocean surface, where it can contribute to global warming, to long-term storage in the deep ocean. And WHOI has lots more planned for 2019.

The Deep-See is a new tool that’s already giving scientists unprecedented data from the ocean’s twilight zone. Photo: Courtesy of WHOI

800,000 farmers served, and counting

In 2018, One Acre Fund worked with more than 800,000 client families, helping them achieve food security and build better livelihoods. At the same time, they made it possible for smallholder farmers to adopt 200,000 solar lights and plant 15 million trees — a big win, as trees increase in value over time, require little labor, return vital nutrients to the land and sequester carbon. In addition, One Acre Fund was featured in Forbes and called a bottom-up model of development that works by South Africa’s IOL Business Report. At the heart of their efforts: technology that meets small-scale farmers where they are, enabling them to pay for services on mobile phones and receive receipts and advice via SMS. Read more about their approach on their blog.

Big wins for community health worker programs

At the close of 2018, Living Goods and Last Mile Health were on track to digitally empowered 14,000community health workers (CHWs) in East and West Africa, which would mean more than 7.6 million people reached. Together, their community health workers delivered close to a million lifesaving treatments for children and supported more than 200,000 women through pregnancies. In addition to securing a new partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to explore how CHWs can close the immunization gap in hard-to-reach areas across the globe, the two organizations also launched an advocacy campaign, called Communities at the Heart of Universal Health Coverage, that highlights the importance of investing in community heath programs to achieve universal health coverage. And in 2019, Last Mile Health will launch the first course of its Community Health Academy.

]]>one acre fund - blandinakatetedIdeas into action: Highlights from our year-end newsletter, in partnership with Brightline Initiativehttps://blog.ted.com/ideas-into-action-highlights-from-our-year-end-newsletter-in-partnership-with-brightline-initiative/
Mon, 31 Dec 2018 15:31:35 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=108837[…]]]>As this calendar year draws to a close, many of us are making resolutions about personal growth and change. It’s a great time, too, for making changes in our working lives. Most of us spend a good portion of our days doing some kind of work — learning or teaching, making or planning, following or leading — and it’s worth thinking deeply on how to use our working time. Over the past month, we’ve been collecting essays about exactly that.

In partnership with the Brightline Initiative, we’ve pulled together a series of talks to inspire you and help you think about what you might explore at work in 2019.

As we near the end of 2018, you may recall this same time last year with a mixture of disbelief and panic. One more year is over; it’s time to plan what’s next.

We tend to think a lot, and as a result we have many great ideas. But transforming them into reality is a tough job. Did the ideas you put on your to-do list last year become reality this year?

Brightline has partnered with TED on this series of curated talk recommendations to help you think about what you’ll bring to life in 2019. To kick-off this aspiration, I want to recommend one of my favorite TED Talks: “Inside the mind of the master procrastinator” presented by Tim Urban. In this powerful and fun talk, Tim goes through our everlasting battle with procrastination — trying to balance instant gratification and the rising panic of trying to get through daily life with the need to reach our goals and deadlines.

Procrastination is in the DNA of human beings, but to get things done, we need to understand that we’re in the driver’s seat of our own lives. Transforming your ideas into reality is what will make your life bright and fulfilled. I always tell people: “What feeds people is food. Not the grocery list.”

My wish for you is that the ideas you include in your to-do list become reality in the coming year.

Just one second can focus your day — and center your lifeYasmin Belkhyr, Editorial team, TED

Everyone touts the transformative benefits of mindfulness. Intrigued, I’ve tried meditation apps — but instead of clarity and peace, I felt mostly distracted and restless. That is until I watched Cesar Kuriyama’s TED Talk, “One second every day.”

For Cesar, exhaustion from work made time seem to blur and blend. So he started recording one second of his day, every day, to document how he spends his life (which eventually resulted in an app, as things do).

Though Cesar doesn’t speak directly to the concept of mindfulness, his philosophy inspired me to use technology to live more immediately in my day, without fear of forgetting or losing time. After watching his talk, I downloaded his app and started recording. Though it only took a few moments, making the time to document a snippet of my day helps me focus and reflect.

Just that one second of video really is enough to bring back memories I’m sure I would have forgotten otherwise. These videos act as a highly concentrated collage of my life — both the good and the not-so-good — which helps me remember all of my year, not just the Instagram-ready parts.

“Record just a small snippet of your life every day,” Kuriyama says at the end of his talk. “So you can never forget that that day you lived.”

Transforming courage into capitalAma Y Adi-Dako, TED TV team

One of my big dreams is to create financial tools and educational resources that help women realize their power and potential across Africa. Chetna Gala Sinha’s TED Talk, which is focused on rural India, renews my faith in the power of economic freedom to help attain gender equality, safety and dignity for women.

“[Women] continue to inspire me, teach me, guide me in my journey of my life,” she says. “Incredible women [who] never had an opportunity to go to school … no degrees, no travel, no exposure. Ordinary women who did extraordinary things with the greatest of their courage, wisdom and humility. These are my teachers.”

I am revitalized by Chetna’s story of opening a bank of her own — the first ever for and by women in her country — after she was denied a loan. It’s a story of grit and perseverance, and it jostles me out of my self-doubt. What’s possible when we stop assuming we know what’s best for those who are less privileged? Everything.

As Chetna says: “Courage is my capital. And if you want, it can be yours also.”

Amy researches “teaming,” which she defines as teamwork on the fly. It’s what happens when we coordinate and collaborate with people across boundaries of all kinds to get work done.

I would expect that we’ve all experienced how difficult it is to work with strangers, and that’s why I believe we should pay attention to Amy’s talk. Because more and more, work is being completed via project teams that don’t know each other.

Amy lists three must-haves for a workplace: situational humility, curiosity and psychological safety. If these characteristics exist, she says, then teaming might work — but a perspective shift is also required for success. Amy suggests that the mindset we need to build a sustainable future requires us to recognize that we can’t do it alone, that we need each other.

I hope you can work with new teams to test these ideas. And I hope that you can create an environment for teams where situational humility, curiosity and psychological safety coexist and support delivering results.

The path to becoming better peopleHelen Walters, Head of curation, TED

Right after I watched Dolly Chugh’s extraordinary talk, I had a moment. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say, it did not make me look or feel like a good person. Essentially, I misread a situation, handled it poorly, and then, a few minutes later when I realized that I’d handled it poorly, I was flooded with bad feelings.

“Wow, did I mess up!”

“Coo, I’m some kind of terrible.”

Etc., etc.

All need for a good therapist aside, if this had happened before Dolly’s talk, it might well have been where I’d left it. I’d have languished for a little while and then moved on, never quite shaking that feeling of messing up, of not being good enough.

But because I had just seen Dolly’s talk, I now had a new technique at my disposal — and the knowledge that my attachment to being a “good” person could be holding me back from actually becoming a better person. That meant that as soon as I realized that I’d messed up, and when I got an opportunity to come clean and confess my mess … I took it. I didn’t hem or haw or try to justify myself. I just apologized, made a mental note not to repeat said error — you know, ever again — and then moved on with a clear head and heart.

Honestly. It was weird. It was also life-changing.

I’m so, so grateful to get to experiment with this new technique for the rest of time. Because, as Dolly says, “The path to being better people just begins with letting go of being a good person.”

Revelatory.

Business insights from Brightline

Interpersonal relationships

People form the links of everything, especially the links between ideas and action. And relationships are essential for people to form such links. We build relationships with family, with neighbors, with friends, with teams and people in our organizations. Growth of relationships is a key success factor of one’s life. When cultivating relationships, don’t forget to look outside! Look for people who are outside of your usual social circles, who have a different set of skills or talents than you or your friends. In the business setting, be sure to look outside of your own organization and understand the needs of competitors, customers and the market landscape. Advantage in the market flows to those who excel at gaining new insights from an ever-changing business environment and quickly responding with the right decisions and adjustments to new ideas and actions.